Dan Cullum

I’m loving the book ‘Build’ by Tony Fadell. Fadell was one of the engineers and designers behind the original iPod and iPhone, and was the founder of Nest—the smart thermostat company.

The following piece of advice stood out to me:

“Being exacting is different to micromanaging.”

Micromanaging is being prescriptive about the step-by-step actions for how someone should perform a task.
Being exacting, on the other hand, is holding high standards and expectations for the target outcome, but letting the team figure out the path to get there—supporting them where and when they need it.

Maru and I are currently in Menorca for a wedding. We’re sharing a four bedroom Airbnb with good friends, and during the course of the weekend we discovered an oddity in the kitchen.

The owners only included 3 normal sized mugs, but had 56 sets of espresso cups and saucers.

56!

To make things weirder, there was no coffee machine in the house to make espresso. So although the set of espresso cups and saucers look striking, they have little to no functional value.

This is an example of little consequence, but it serves as a good metaphor for products and services that are built without thinking about the end user. The feature the team wants to build looks cool—56 sets of espresso cups and saucers cool—but if it doesn’t solve a real problem for real people, the feature has no value. Zero.

I’ve been using both an iPhone and Android phone for the past 6 months, and I’ve gotten used to the quirks and idiosyncrasies of each.

There are a few features on each of the platforms that I really wish were on the other.
One that I find particularly helpful is Google’s Android clock app. When you set an alarm, there is a little notification that pops up and says “Alarm set for X hours and X minutes from now”.

It’s a small signal, but I find it really helpful. If I’m going to bed later than usual, and I see I’m going to get less than 7 hours of sleep, I’ll reconsider if I can shift anything in my morning routine to later in the day to ensure I hit my sleep target. I’ll often find myself moving exercise or errands to alternate times to prioritise sleep.

The iPhone doesn’t have this functionality, and although sleep duration is something I could easily calculate, I’d just rather not do it right before falling asleep.

I love finding these little details within products that have an outsized impact on the user experience.

I like the idea that “if the goal doesn’t make you feel a little squeamish, you’re not aiming high enough”.

When we’re doing something that requires guts, we’ll almost certainly feel it in our gut.

A colleague shared a helpful idea the other day. It went something like this:

We can’t solve every problem ourselves. There aren’t enough hours in the day, nor do we have the energy to do so.

However, if we can be the cause as to why a problem was solved—by asking an insightful question, nudging a team in the right direction, or alerting people of issues early—then we can scale ourselves across a wider breadth of work.

When it’s something so few people want to do, it becomes an asset. A way to build trust, confidence, and empathy with the people we work with everyday.

We shouldn’t be afraid to own the mistake.

Bringing something new into the world is a messy endeavour.

Glue gets everywhere. Pencils go blunt. Great material falls to the cutting room floor. Old plans end up as scrunched up paper sitting beside the waste bin—the result of a hasty shot.

If we push publish and we’re not left with some clean up to do, we probably took it too easy and could’ve given little more.

Some books you read immediately, and others sit on your self for a while. A few weeks, months, years even.

Shoe Dog is in the latter category for me. It’s often touted as a “must read” but it always fell into the I’ll-get-round-to-it-later category. But after watching ‘Air’ the other day, and seeing Ben Affleck’s portrayal of Nike’s eccentric founder, Phil Knight, I went straight to the shelf and started reading the book that night.

I wrote back in 2020 about what I called “right time resonance”, when some books aren’t right for us at a certain time, but are perfect for us at a later stage. That’s what’s happened with me and Shoe Dog.

Last night, Maru and I watched the recently released movie, Air, starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon—that famous pair originating in Good Will Hunting.

It’s the story of how Nike won their sponsorship deal with Michael Jordan. Although it sounds like a bland story on the surface—a tale about a shoe deal—it’s filled with greater characters, like Viola Davis playing Jordan’s mother, as well as fascinating insights into what Nike was like before it become the global behemoth we know it to be today.

It’s also a massive feel-good film. It’s one of those stories where you know the ending already, but you’re enjoying the journey for all its twists, turns, and bumps along the way.

Throughout my career I’ve seen teams throw themselves at tough problems across a range of industries.

One of the hardest—and most valuable—activities is taking something complex and making it simple and easy to understand.

A good rule of thumb is “If we can’t understand it, no one else will”.

It applies to creating presentations for company leaders, the products and services we want to bring to market, or the plans we want our colleagues to buy in to.

Many people skip the “let’s make this simpler” step because it’s hard, because it takes a long time, and because it isn’t straight forward. But the investment almost always pays itself back with interest.

Here’s a way to improve the way we support and contribute to meetings: think “What’s the most impactful question I could ask right now?”

When we flip our default stance from answering to questioning, we make the conversation more open and curious. We more willing to entertain alternative ideas, and we create an environment where quieter voices can share their opinions.

I appreciated this reminder from Jason Fried, “You have a limited supply of yes, and an unlimited supply of no. Yet people act as if the opposites are true. Yes is easier to say, but no is easier to do.”

When we critically assess our finite supply of yes, it’s easy to spot a bunch of things we could’ve and should’ve said “no” to.

What would happen if we did this check on a more regular cadence? What time could we win back?

I really liked this diagram from Jade Rubick, a leading thinking on effective engineering teams.

The thing I like is that any team, even the most high performing ones, can look at this list and find at least one way they can become more trusting. It’s a powerful guide for running better teams and organisations.

In the UK, most flats have their own washing machine. Renters, in particular, end up with cheap, underpowered machines because there’s no incentive for a landlord to install a good one.

In the US—at least in the buildings I’ve stayed in—they usually have communal washer / dryers. Their laundry setups are powerful, fast, and do the job well.

This post isn’t about the nuances of UK and US washer / dryer combos though, but rather the trade-offs we encounter when optimising at different levels across different systems.

Unless everyone is using their “machine” all the time, it doesn’t make sense for people to have their own. The cumulative upfront and ongoing maintenance cost ends up being more than fewer, better machines used at a greater level of efficiency.

Over the past month, multiple people have described parks across both London and Buenos Aires as “lungs of the city”.

I love this metaphor. Parks provide a respite for residents, they lower the temperature of surrounding neighbourhoods, and they play an essential role in balancing and regulating the rhythms of people and air quality in a city.

They also great examples of long term thinking. Almost all of them could be sold for eye-watering sums for development, yet their persistence is evidence of their role in keeping a city healthy.

Written on a warm spring afternoon in Hampstead Heath.